Who says the failure of the Hudson Yards megaproject to get out of the ground in a timely manner is a bad thing? The slow redevelopment of the Far West Side has let Ohm, the 34-story luxury rental building towering over the West Side Rail Yards, find its inner party animal! The neighborhood is still a Manhattan no-man's-land, so Douglaston Development (which kicked out the crackheads and got to work on the site years ago) is getting creative with its marketing pitch. The Times reported over the weekend that reps for the 288-unit building are trying to attach the building to the West Chelsea nightclub scene in an effort to lure tenants to Eleventh Avenue and 30th Street. Those tenants might need ear plugs.
The Knitting Factory is booking bands to play the building's massive lobby twice a month (open to residents only), and other nights the lounge will host DJs, karaoke and open mic performances. There are also plenty of other young and social touches that developers hope will bang home the message "that this is not Midtown West — this is Chelsea." Says one Ohmer, "The club scene has been an enormous channel of applications thus far." And since Chelsea nightclub creatures love their drugs, Douglaston has got them covered.
Two-bedroom apartments start at around $3,600 per month (not including one free month), so we can expect some roommate sardining going on at Ohm. And roommates have such wandering, sticky fingers, don't they? No worries:
Apart from that, there are details like apartment safes, which could matter to clubgoers who party in their own cribs. “You may trust your friends and roommates, but you don’t have to,” said Jeffrey E. Levine, the chairman of Douglaston Development and its construction arm, Levine Builders. “And every medicine cabinet has a keyed lockbox for pharmaceuticals. Viagra, Vioxx, Vicodin — nobody needs to know but you.”
So what we have here is a well-guarded luxury stash house in an isolated and anonymous location that's also somewhat near a very active nightlife destination. Gee, who'd be interested in that?
· A Nightclub to Call Home [NYT]
· Ohm [ohmnewyorkcity.com]
· 316 Eleventh Avenue coverage [Curbed]
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